Sponsor (Nov 1946-Oct 1947)

Martin L. Strauss II — he isn t happy unless promotins something "' n le Bellevue-Stratrord in Philadelphia where they sat 'em in the aisles the increase and failing ;it thai t> for a considera dI time. Haul, played along with Biow until he sold himself to anon Reynolds 1 I and then turned m I. Biow assured Hawk that the latter was out of his mind t<. leave such a hoi program Hawk left anyway. The nexl week Biow announced that Takt It Or Leave It had attained "big time stature" and had brought in the well-known Broadway comedian, Phil Baker, to take over the mc role, and the program continued it> upward climb. Less than a year later Hawk offered $10,000 for the Takt It Or Leave It program and received the answer that he expected from Biow. "Are you nuts?" While the program was building, the Eversharp organization hadn't forgotten to develop merchandising approaches to fo tain pen and automatic pencil selling. The program consistently has a higher sponsor identification than practically any program on the air with the possible exception of Lux Radio Theater and Fibber McGee and Molly. That's swell to Strauss but he knows that "reason why copy" is also a must and so almost from the beginning there was the $5 pen, "guaranteed not for years, not for life, but guaranteed forever." That appeal has been used all through the past six years, even though a repair charge of 35 cents has been added to the copy, and the price tag on the pen has gone up and up. At the end of the first year of broadcasting (1941) the Eversharp organization faced a decision. The corporation was in the red for approximately the amount that the program had cost them. It was a temptation to drop the program. Philip Morris, Biow's biggest client, was ready, willing, able, and even anxious to pick it up had Strauss dropped it. He didn't. It was a turning point in the Eversharp history, for while the net sales in 1940 were very little higher than they were in 1939 (actually only $7,326 higher), the business doubled in 1941, jumping from $2,108,000 to $4,130,391. and increased at the rate of approximately $2,000,000 a year for the next two years. In 1944 Take It Or Leave It hit its all-time high with a 23.8, a rating that few programs attain, even those whose budgets run over $20,000 a week for talent alone. That's many times what the $64 Question program costs. By this time it was on the full CBS network. The $64 Question was part and parcel of American language and Eversharp felt certain that the time had come to up the price range of their pen and pencil line. There had been only an $8.75 topper when Eversharp became the Strauss baby. Now it was time for a $64 gold pen and pencil set and Raymond Loewy was called in to design one worthy of the price tag. It went into production pronto and just as pronto sold off the jewelers' shelves. America was ready for class merchandise and had the money to gift its friends expensively. Once while Larry Robbins. sales vp, was resting up for another romp around the country, an executive for a big manufacturing organization asked him if it weren't possible to have Eversharp make up a "really expensive" solid gold pen and pencil set. When Robbins got back to Chicago he asked his midwest sales manager to check and see how many sets he thought he could sell at an estimated retail price of $125. Together they figured they could place 1,000 and they called them Command Performance. Nothing very original in the title, since the G. I.'s overseas were hearing "Command Performance" broadcasts every week, the President of the U. S. has for years been seeing an annual drama presentation as a "Command Performance." But five times the estimated 1,000 $125 sets were sold the first season they were marketed and they have since become an integral part of the Eversharp line. Now the Eversharp business started really going places: it jumped from $8,947,056 net sales in 1943 to $20,860,838 for 1944 (the fiscal period ending February 28, 1945). It was second in dollar volume in the pen business, being only $457,212 behind Parker which had taken the lead away from Sheaffer which. 11